Americans rapidly increasing consumption of added sugars over the last fifteen years has contributed significantly to a major public health problem, the reversal of which the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Koplan and Fleming, J Am Med Assn, 284, 1696, 2000) has targeted as one of its ‘top ten’ health goals for the 21st century. The problem is the epidemic of obesity in the US. Obesity is defined as a body weight 30% above the ideal body weight. Obesity is strongly linked with greater risk of heart disease, high cholesterol and blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke and breast, colon and prostate cancers. A recent study has shown that more than 50% of Americans are overweight, and 22% are obese.
Probiotics are at times incorporated into dietary supplements because they contain beneficial bacteria or yeast cultures. The Probiotics that comprise beneficial bacteria live in your digestive tract and promote digestive and immune health. Probiotics are intended to bolster the body's naturally occurring intestinal flora and to help natural flora to maintain and/or reestablish themselves. Probiotics are sometimes recommended by doctors and nutritionists to aid in digestion, especially if the natural flora has been destroyed through antibiotic treatments, illness, or other means. However, many types of probiotics don't survive the harsh acidic stomach environment.
Investigation into uses and benefits for probiotics is ongoing, but a number of benefits and therapies have been suggested. For instance, it has been suggested that certain probiotics may be useful in managing lactose intolerance. Lactic acid bacteria, common probiotics, convert lactose into lactic acid; thus their ingestion may help to break down lactose to an extent that allows lactose intolerant individuals to tolerate more lactose than otherwise possible. It has also been suggested that probiotics may be advantageous in prevention of colon cancer, since some probiotics have demonstrated anti-mutagenic effects in the lab setting, apparently due to their ability to bind with heterocyclic amines (carcinogenic substances formed in cooked meat) or by decreasing the activity of certain enzymes that generate carcinogens in the digestive system.
Probiotics may also be useful in lowering cholesterol levels, presumably by breaking down bile in the gut, thus inhibiting its reabsorption (which enters the blood as cholesterol). Probiotics may also lower blood pressure and improve immune function (possibly by means of competitively inhibiting harmful bacterial growth, increasing the number of antibody-producing plasma cells, increasing or improving phagocytosis, and/or increasing the proportion of T lymphocytes and Natural Killer cells).
Foods containing probiotics have also been shown or suggested to have a variety of health effects, including decreasing the incidence of respiratory tract infections and dental caries in children, reducing the incidence of peptic ulcers in adults when used in combination with standard medical treatments, prevention of acute diarrhea, reducing inflammation and hypersensitivity responses, and improving mineral absorption.
Food products and dietary supplements containing viable probiotic cultures have become increasingly popular due to the suggested health benefits associated with such products. The most common forms for probiotics are dairy products and probiotic fortified foods such as yogurt and cheese.
For example, yogurt is a fermented dairy product made by adding lactic acid bacterial cultures to milk, which causes the conversion of sugars (including lactose) and other carbohydrates into lactic acid. It is this process of creating lactic acid that provides the characteristic low pH (about 4.2) and resultant sour taste of yogurt and many other fermented dairy products. To offset the natural sourness of yogurt, it can be sweetened, flavored, or packaged in containers with fruit or fruit jam. Therefore, yogurt manufacturers generally add high amounts of sugar or sugar substitutes to compensate for the sour taste, which makes the product more palatable for many consumers, but results in higher calories. Thus, it would be desirable to be able to decrease calories yet at the same time provide a sweetener that may have added health benefits.
Moreover, the low pH and sourness of yogurt tends to be incompatible with many “ice cream-type” flavors, including for example, vanilla, chocolate, fudge, caramel, marshmallow, nut, coconut, peanut butter, mint, fruit, dulce de leche, butter pecan, cookie dough, and the like as well as combinations thereof. In contrast, a higher pH product (i.e., about 4.8 to about 6.2), which enables better tasting ice cream-type flavors, is associated with a longer shelf life of incorporated probiotic cultures. However, high pH is also associated with an increased and undesirable susceptibility to pathogenic and/or spoilage microbial growth.
Natural cheese has a different anti-microbial system. The growth of undesirable pathogenic and/or spoilage microorganisms is prevented in cheese by a combination of acid developed by the starter cultures, the salt content, and relatively low moisture. The production of other antimicrobial agents by the starter lactic cultures may further boost the antimicrobial properties of the cheese.
Thus, there is a need for supplements/additives/formulations/compositions that have sweetening properties with minimal calories. An added benefit would be present if these supplements/additives/formulations/compositions also contained health benefits.
The present invention provides these and other benefits, as will be apparent from the following description of embodiments of the present invention.